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Children reading out their sums in Yosepha Mahenge taking Standard 5 for maths. Yosepha usually splits her class to work in groups for the first part of the lesson, as in 54 – 56. 57 and 58 show how two leaders from each group come out to read their answers and write them on the board…Group working is one of the key classroom strategies taught to teachers in the programme supported by Oxfam. This works well despite the class sizes – here in St 5 there were more than 80 students.

‘We are not so talkative in class. We give more space for the children’s voices. If you had come before, you would see many questions written on the board and the children left to answer them in their exercise books. We still write questions for them, but now no more than five or so. It is only a small part of the lesson.’